Welcome to the 2019 MidSchoolMath National Conference! #MidSchoolMath2019

Looking for Session Handouts? Check out the Conference Dropbox at http://bit.ly/MidSchoolMath2019! Additional materials will be added as they are provided.

Thank you for joining us in Santa Fe for our 6th Annual Conference! If you selected your sessions prior to Sunday, 2/24, a print copy of your personalized schedule will be provided in your attendee packet. You’ll also get a daily agenda email from SCHED!

As a reminder, helpful information about traveling to Santa Fe, including airport shuttle services, featured hotels, getting around town, restaurants, and more can be found here.

After the Conference, please take a moment to provide session feedback using SCHED! Thank you!

Limited CapacityfullAdding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.

In this session, I'll present two advance organizer diagrams that I use to guide students in class. One is an overview of several key concepts in 8th grade math and their interconnectedness. The other illustrates the relation between the order of operations, distributive properties and operations with exponents. Both are helpful for understanding the structure of math as opposed to merely memorized facts and procedures.

The first is presented early in the 8th grade year and illustrates relations between: Ratio and Proportion, emphasized in the 7th grade year, Dilation, Similar Figures and Indirect Measurement, Functions, Pythagorean Theorem, Slope and other related concepts. When finished, some students choose to embellish them into artwork, similar to the ""student reflections"" in MidSchoolMath.

This visual organizer of various but related concepts helps us understand the structure of mathematics. It is used as a touchstone now and then during the year. Also, later in the year, a very similar diagram could be presented to illustrate the transition to slope-intercept equations. The second diagram is my presentation of the 'hierarchy of operations' as it relates to the distributive properties and operations with exponents. The understanding of this structure also extends to the topics of recursive and explicit formulas for geometric and arithmetic sequences, and logarithms in future classes.

This diagram allows one overarching concept to inform several seemingly disparate topics, deepening understand and facilitating use of algorithms and procedures. I will present as much as I do for my 8th grade students, but extending and deepening the information for a teacher audience.

Geno's been teaching math in one way or another for 25+ years. This is mainly because a bunch of Jr. High students in study hall he was supervising told him he should. He was good at explaining their math work and that he should be a math teacher. He considers middle school to be... Read More →